Rocking Chairs

When I was a little girl, every summer my family would drive down to Richmond, Virginia to visit my father's family. He had lots of brothers and sisters and we would stay with Granny. I had my favorite cousin Debra to play with and we had a blast (although very hot and there was no air conditioning in those days). One of my fondest memories is watching my Dad and his sweet Mother sitting in the living room, rocking in rocking chairs and having quiet conversations. Because my father had gone into the service and was stationed in New Jersey, as time went on he lost most of his southern twang (although when he got mad and yelled at us, it came right back). When he rocked and chatted with his mom, that accent came right back and I loved listening. Watching the two of them calmly rocking in those chairs, I think that is when my love of rocking chairs began. 

When Kevin and I were first married, we had a lovely wooden rocking chair. It was very "country" in style and as our tastes in furniture grew to be more traditional and even a bit modern, that chair did not "fit" the look I was going for. I think by the time we had moved 3 times, the rocking chair was given away and that was the end of my "rocking" at home. 

Fast forward to now, with retirement on the horizon and my body feeling a bit beat up I asked my hubby if we could please get rocking chairs for our back deck. He sort of looked at me funny but then he gladly took me to Home Depot to go looking. They didn't have to have luxurious chairs, simple and comfortable and ones that gave me a good "rock" was all I needed. Don't you know we found the perfect (plastic) chairs and after stuffing them into the back of my jeep, home went went to rock. 

Tonight it's still pretty warm (it was over 100 degrees today) so I went with a glass of ice tea to "rock". We live in a pretty nice size townhouse and have the cutest back deck (Trex of course, because who has time to repaint) which backs up to the woods. It's a quiet place (except for the occasional Frontier Airlines plane coming into or leaving from Mercer/Trenton Airport) and we have lots of birds, deer and other assorted wildlife in those woods. It's the perfect place to relax, stare off into space and just be.  

Now does this make me feel more retired? I think it does at least a little because when we worked until  6 or 7 pm, it didn't give us much time to relax after creating and eating dinner. We've had summers were we only used our back deck a hand full of times, which was really a shame. The fact that we have already spent hours "rocking" in our new chairs shows how much more time we have. Can we rock all day - certainly not but it's been nice to getting back to something I love... rocking back and forth and just thinking.